From chemistry to virology
Baltimore studied chemistry at Swarthmore College before pursuing animal-virus research at the Rockefeller Institute. His interest in virus-specific enzymes developed through work at the Salk Institute and MIT, whose faculty he joined in 1968.
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Discovering reverse transcriptase
In 1970 Baltimore and Howard Temin’s team independently demonstrated an enzyme in certain RNA tumour viruses that could synthesise DNA using RNA as a template. The finding explained a route by which RNA-virus information could pass through a DNA intermediate. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize with Temin and Dulbecco.
Immunology and scientific institutions
Baltimore’s laboratory later combined virology with immunology, including work on proteins involved in immunoglobulin-gene rearrangement and on transcriptional regulation. He helped found the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and subsequently headed Rockefeller University and Caltech. Baltimore died in 2025.
References: [1]